


Hello/Come Here

by GStK



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/M, Post-Summertime Record
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5717503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Listening to you, I forget to listen to myself.</p><p>(Haruka, Takane, and learning how to be.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello/Come Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackCats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCats/gifts).



> Second-person PoV. Abstract. MV continuity.  
> A small study in how two people can fit together, if they try.

He is every picture he has ever drawn.

That is what every artist will tell you, but he means it in a different way. He does not put a piece of himself in every sketch, but it is the lines that come together to give him meaning, the picture itself that inspires his shape. Other people are filled up by life – memories, love, a passion that will spark until the day they die – but he is not. He is the linework for a product still unfinished.

You’d think seventeen years would be enough to make some progress, wouldn’t you? And he’d nod, and he’d smile along with you, that stupid grin that’s never not _sorry_ , _can’t help it_.

He tries. But empty houses and a dead mother don’t put colour in your face.

* * *

But you do.

You, with a tongue like whiplash and crappy drugstore headphones. You, who always know what to make of the people you meet, burning down ambivalence with a crackle of words and sarcastic flame. It’s ironic, for all the uncertainty you put yourself through, the late nights you spend playing games so you don’t have to think about _you_. It’s ironic, because you’re a nice girl when you don’t try, and staying mean gets harder every day.

It’s ironic because you think he doesn’t notice.

But he does.

And he doesn’t like you, because you’re a lot alike, for all the differences that make you. The days fall like you do during spells of sleep, and you become his first friend. He likes you, and in his own way, resents you.

You don’t think he gets it but he does. He does. He always does.

* * *

You never do.

You notice what you want to. Like the moment he tops six feet, staring at you with wide eyes when you speak. His eyelashes, the way they flutter – and the way you get mad at him for how he inspires poetry in you, and then get mad about that, too, never in agreement with yourself.

You notice every time he gets paler than normal. When his breath hitches. How he sleeps more in class, how the pen pressure on his drawings gets lighter every day. You are the closest to _you_ when you voice your concern, corral him in so you don’t have to listen to the pace of your own heartbeat. You check his pulse sometimes, hand to wrist or ear to back, and listen to that instead.

But you don’t get it.

You’d think a year and then some would be enough to get it, wouldn’t you? And he’d shake his head, and he’d smile at you, the discord of non-answer his only weapon.

You don’t understand, but he does.

His own feelings. How your concern reminds him of white walls and sympathy cards, all the years of people not knowing how to act around him. The way his presence lights your room but dims his own, because no one lets him walk unless it’s on cotton, and the only walls he can bump into are rubber. He knows you like him, and he gets it, the same way a writer assumes the feelings of his characters when he puts pen to paper, but leaves it all behind when it’s over.

He doesn’t let himself think about it, and that’s better for you. It really is.

You tear yourself up over it anyway, but you’ve always been one for the martyr complex.

* * *

It suits you.

Growing up. It really does. You look better with your hair long – that’s what he tells you, and for once, you don’t hide your face away.

You can learn to look outside yourself. When you stop trying to cover your ears to the noise inside of you, you climb out of the tiny box you’ve been living in this whole time.

There are less reasons for you to fret over him, now, but you still do ( _and never won’t_ , _because that’s_ you). He doesn’t shy away when you do, doesn’t look guilty. And for all the ways you are alike, your paths break off here, because while you needed to grow up, he needed to turn back.

Everyone who called him childish never got him. He twines his fingers in your hair, grins; you make him stoop down so you can do the same, and he doesn’t flinch.

And for all the distance his height creates, you like how he has to lean down when you kiss.

* * *

But before that, there’s all of this:

You make false idols out of the dead and say his name so many times, it loses meaning.

He tries to hear the _I love you_ in _get well soon_ but doesn’t, can’t.

You never hear the date the doctors give him, and neither does anyone else, because it doesn’t matter in the end.

The thought of your Romeo-and-Juliet ending makes you sick. You’re glad you lose yourself, because you’ve got a lot of thinking to do. A lot of things you have to change.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but not like the one you had to swallow every morning when you were still real. You don’t like it, and it can never become anything routine.

But the prognosis is good. You can get better.

There is always hope for the both of you.

* * *

You lean your head against his back when he takes his medicine every morning, listen to his heartbeat. You could fall asleep to the rhythm of it if you tried, and when you shut your eyes, you can pretend the morning light is sunset – yellow, burning at the edges of red, welcoming you.

Until he smiles. You can feel it when he does, every shift of his muscle when he lights up, and that is how he keeps you awake. There’s nothing you want to run from, this time.

You’ll laugh when he gets his first sunburn, even when you feel that crackle of fire in your chest.

He’ll frown when he means it, expose his budding colours to you. He’ll let you dip your fingers in his running river, and your presence will dye him different shades.

You’ll say _I love you_.

And he won’t hear _get well soon_ in your words, because that isn’t what you mean.

* * *

Even before then and after, you’ll love him for his malice.

Because sometimes he likes to tell people _see you next time_ , because it makes them uncomfortable, because the uncertainty you char is the uncertainty chases after, because that is life.

He’ll love you when you’re the only one who says _obviously_.

You’ll hate him for his silence, but there’s hope for that, too.

* * *

_Next time_ , he says, and you’ll grin because you’re already there.

* * *

Next time, in another place,

When your waves come to his beaches,

And you smile when you’re happy, and he doesn’t when he’s not.

When your hand fits in his, even with your spindly fingers and his artist’s callouses.

When he thinks he must have drowned and come out on the other side, alive,

And he tosses his words away, paints his own way of living.

You’re not perfect, but you get it.

You really do.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: love; hope; "my sound, your ideas."


End file.
